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A fascinating, tongue-in-cheek piece about the dynamics in relationships. Believe it or not every relationship is made up of chaos muppets are order muppets. Which one are you?

Every once in a while, an idea comes along that changes the way we all look at ourselves forever. Before Descartes, nobody knew they were thinking. They all believed they were just mulling. Until Karl Marx, everyone totally hated one another but nobody knew quite why. And before Freud, nobody understood that all of humanity could be classified into one of two simple types: people who don’t yet know they want to sleep with their mothers, and people who already know they want to sleep with their mothers. These dialectics can change and shape who we are so profoundly, it’s hard to imagine life before the paradigm at all.

The same thing is true of Muppet Theory, a little-known, poorly understood philosophy that holds that every living human can be classified according to one simple metric: Every one of us is either a Chaos Muppet or an Order Muppet.

Chaos Muppets are out-of-control, emotional, volatile. They tend toward the blue and fuzzy. They make their way through life in a swirling maelstrom of food crumbs, small flaming objects, and the letter C. Cookie Monster, Ernie, Grover, Gonzo, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and—paradigmatically—Animal, are all Chaos Muppets. Zelda Fitzgerald was a Chaos Muppet. So, I must tell you, is Justice Stephen Breyer.

Order Muppets—and I’m thinking about Bert, Scooter, Sam the Eagle, Kermit the Frog, and the blue guy who is perennially harassed by Grover at restaurants (the Order Muppet Everyman)—tend to be neurotic, highly regimented, averse to surprises and may sport monstrously large eyebrows. They sometimes resent the responsibility of the world weighing on their felt shoulders, but they secretly revel in the knowledge that they keep the show running. Your first grade teacher was probably an Order Muppet. So is Chief Justice John Roberts.

Uniting their forces, three local universities are bringing the Dalai Lama to San Diego in April for a series of talks on topics ranging from global climate change to religious harmony. This will be the spiritual leader’s first official visit to San Diego.

Tenzin Gyatso is the 14th Dalai Lama, the supreme religious head of Tibet. He has lived in India since 1959, having fled his native land after Chinese troops defeated rebels trying to establish an independent Tibet. Now 76, the Dalai Lama remains a prolific writer — his most recent book, “Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World,” was published in December — and still spends up to 10 months a year on the road.

He’s also a pop culture force, followed by celebrities and more than 3.4 million people on Twitter. Yet the Dalai Lama has never been to San Diego, outside of a brief stop more than 20 years ago to meet privately with local Buddhist monks.

His April visit will be the second stop in a 12-day North American tour, which will begin in Hawaii and include events in Los Angeles; Rochester, Minn.; and Canada.